Books & Periodicals

The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (ABA) has scrapped its sponsorship deal with Amazon-owned AbeBooks after the online book portal chose to quit selling in four countries.

The last-minute discovery of a 1776 first edition of Adam Smith’s '…Wealth of Nations' was a magical, unforgettable moment for a Derbyshire saleroom’s book specialist.

The very first lot offered as part of a Harry Houdini collection in an October 20 sale held by US magic specialist Potter & Potter (20% buyer’s premium) was a 50 cent, 1898 copy of Magic Made Easy…

Illustrated below is a spread from a 1488 edition of a popular account of travels to various parts of the world that is generally referred to as a compilation by Sir John Mandeville.

The sale to held by Blackwell auctions in Florida on November 10 will include a selection of books from the library of Dromoland Castle, the Irish castle in County Clare where the historic ‘Armada table’ sold last month by Adam’s in Drogheda, Ireland, for €360,000 was housed for 300 years (ATG No 2364).

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from November 6-17, 2018.

Formerly in the collections of a distinguished English bibliophile, Major John Roland Abbey, a copy of Luigi Mayer’s well-known set of Views in Egypt, Palestine and the Ottoman Empire was one of the highlights of a recent Scottish sale.

Published in 1962, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first book in a popular series of lupine tales by Joan Aiken (1924-2004), a prolific and prize-winning author whose specialities included the supernatural and children’s books that involved an elaborate, alternative history of Britain.

A 17th century manuscript grimoire that sold for £18,000 (featured on these pages in ATG No 2363) was very much the star turn of an October 2 sale in Sussex, but certainly not the only lot to catch the eye.

A handful of copies of Robert Morden’s 'Geography Rectified, or a Description of the World' have made a little more at auction than a 1680 copy offered in a Stacey’s (24% buyer’s premium) sale of September 10 – but all bar one of them were second or third editions of 1688 and 1693.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from October 30-November 9, 2018.

All rather slim – one in fact a single sheet broadside – the three items noted here were all part of a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of September 25 and, spanning some 80 years, all bear Boston imprints.

Rude Rowlandson print is among the highlights of Gloucestershire auction.

They may not have been the most photogenic lots in the catalogue of a recent London sale, but a couple of lots were highly attractive for their significance in the maths and measurements field.

Private Collections, an October 3 sale at Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium), offered works of art from a number of sources and among lots from the estate of the late Victor, 3rd Viscount Churchill – a cousin of Winston – there were a few books.

The dust jacket is far from pristine, but this 1933 first of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas is signed and inscribed by both its subject and her lifelong partner, the writer Gertrude Stein.

Eleven years after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, fellow writer Walker Percy was the man who ensured that his only book, A Confederacy of Dunces, finally got into print.

It may seem hard to credit nowadays, but photographs of fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley (Yorkshire) garden of two young girls, produced in 1917 as a practical joke, were taken to be genuine by many people – most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.